# Apple M5 Mac

10 Hacker News commenters recommended Apple M5 Mac and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it for speed, battery life and running large local AI models on unified memory; critics say it trails GPUs for AI work and lacks good Linux support.

## Why people recommend it

- Runs large local AI models (3 comments): "I personally now do more AI stuff and gaming on my M5 mac with its 24 GB shared (300 GB/s) RAM pool than my 12 GB 5070 Ti" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48326399)) "It's a beast of a machine - I love that I can run an 80GB model and still have 48GB left for everything else." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48143916)) "since it uses unified RAM and a powerful SoC CPU/GPU" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48639026))
- Fast, long battery life (3 comments): "2.26x faster and 3-4x more battery life for the Mac." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47540764)) "it's streets ahead of my old M1 Pro in speed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50121299)) "my M5 uses 50 watts on the exact same save" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49445875))

## What people warn about

- Slow for AI versus GPUs (3 comments): "Macs could be real interesting in this space butr they lack the raw FLOPS with the M5 generation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48812682)) "It will run, but prefill and token gen are still slow relative to my consumer GPU box." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100245)) "It feels pretty slow on both the M5 Mac and the DGX Spark." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49327242))
- Poor Linux support (3 comments): "If you think running a Linux desktop on an Ampere is bad, try running it on an M5 Mac!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48730320)) "it's not possible due to Apple's lack of documentation and some other issues" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48711676)) "I wouldn't buy an M5 for Linux" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48748303))
- Background AI tasks and fan load (3 comments): "Games and heavy applications slow down and stutter because of "AI" background processes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50120834)) "Every time I turn on my M5 I have to manually turn apple intelligence off." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49792767)) "I basically have to run my fans at full speed all day while working now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50122157))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Apple MacBook Pro](https://hackerapproved.com/p/macbook-pro.md): 928 recommend
- [Apple MacBook Neo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/macbook-neo.md): 707 recommend
- [MacBook Air](https://hackerapproved.com/p/macbook-air.md): 633 recommend
- [Apple MacBook](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apple-macbook.md): 499 recommend
- [Framework Laptop 12](https://hackerapproved.com/p/framework-laptop-12.md): 83 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Apple+Mac+laptop+M5+chip&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Official site](https://www.apple.com/mac/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Apple M5 Mac", https://hackerapproved.com/p/apple-m5-mac/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).